Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews, questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. To celebrate our fifth, we at Dribbble are sitting in the Timeout seat. Today: Elizabeth.
Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.
I’m Elizabeth Barr — newbie front end developer, Dribbble support coach and mom. I’m originally from Buffalo, where I was a newspaper editor, and now live in beautiful Greenville, SC, a great little city that shows up on all sorts of lists of best places to live and play in the United States. And it has a cool tech scene that has come of age thanks to transplants attracted by Greenville’s great quality of life. I live here with my very tired restaurant-owning husband and an awesome 9-year-old. Once a month I volunteer at my daughter’s school, a fact that always makes me giggle and think, “Ten years ago, did you ever think you’d live in the South and serve BBQ to kids who call you ma’am?”
How’d you land at Dribbble?
Right after finishing a punishing, life-changing front-end developer course at The Iron Yard, an academy and accelerator here in Greenville (and campuses all over the South), I had the great pleasure to meet Rich. Rich is the husband of the greatest colleague I’ve ever worked with but never met, Susanna Baird. Susanna and I worked for AOL News from our respective kitchen tables (her in Salem, me in Greenville) before AOL bought The Huffington Post and we held our breath for two months as we waited to find out if we’d get to keep our jobs. (We didn’t! I can laugh about it now. Sort of. It wasn’t funny at the time, though, given that our husbands were each getting businesses off the ground. In a recession! Good times that I hope to never repeat.)
So this April, Rich and Susanna and their super cute kids swung through Greenville on their spring break. Not only did I get to finally meet Susanna in person, but I got to prattle on to a real-life tech company founder and use hard-won vocab words like “Grunt,” “Node” and “merge conflict.” I don’t think Rich was eager to talk shop on his vacation, but my enthusiasm must have made an impression, because shortly after he asked if I’d consider the support coach role while I continued working on freelance projects.
What are you working on?
At Dribbble, I respond to emails from people with questions, problems and suggestions; monitor Twitter for feedback of all sorts; write help documentation; and generally monitor the Dribbble community and assist where I can. I even opened a GitHub issue this week. (Though the public won’t see that new feature come to life as it’s in our admin.)
It’s an amazing opportunity to work for a company that has become ubiquitous in such a short time. On every resume, on every portfolio, of anyone in the digital realm are links to not only their LinkedIn and GitHub profiles but also Dribbble. In only five years Rich and Dan have done this.
When I’m not on the clock with Dribbble or ferrying my daughter to one sport or another, I create websites and apps for clients. Right now I’m working on a content-rich site for an area realtor that integrates four APIs. I can’t wait to see it live.
Tell us about your setup.
I work on 15-inch MacBook Pro, mostly at home but occasionally at a co-work space. I still don’t use an external monitor, probably because I haven’t settled in fully here or there. (I’ll probably co-work more when school starts back.) I’m seriously thinking of converting to a standing desk before sitting kills us all.
I try to take notes with pen and paper whenever possible since that’s the best way to learn and retain new material. But when I took my class earlier this year, I was confronted with just how bad my writing has become and how “out of shape” my handwriting muscles have become. Texting FTW, amirite LOL?
The tools I use most with Dribbble are Snappy, Basecamp and good old Twitter. In my superhero coding life, I use GitHub and Sublime Text 2 (and Atom) most often. I’m no longer scared of the terminal.
I’m Chrome only and get slightly indignant when I have to refactor code to accommodate other browsers. I have way too many tabs open, all the time.
Choose a favorite shot from another Player. Why do you dig it?
So, so hard. I admire every designer, animator and illustrator who shares work because these are skills that don’t come easy to me. When I look at shots on Dribbble, I’m always eager for any info from the designer because I want to know how it was created. I want to know the tricks, the inspiration, why that color.
But when it comes down to it, I’m a sucker for gifs. They’re an amazing modern medium for communication. (Their ubiquity is matched only by Dribbble’s!) I can’t get through the day without sending at least a half-dozen. John Mayer would say they say what I mean to say. YKWIM?
Since gifs and pop culture are inextricably linked, this [All The Single Ladies by Fraser Davidson] is a shot that just tickles me. I love the way “Beyonce” backs it up.
Find Elizabeth at Dribbble and on Twitter.
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